The Grand Army of the Republic and the Wisconsin department

              THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC AND
THE WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT
Hosea W. Rood
ORIGIN OF THE G. A. R.
From the third day of February to the fourth of March,
1864, General Sherman led an army of about twenty-five
thousand men from Vicksburg eastward across the state of
Mississippi, to Meridian and back, for the purpose of
destroying Confederate railroads. There was little fighting,
not much to do besides tearing up the roads and burning the
ties—this work, of course, being done by the men in the
ranks.
Surgeon Benjamin F. Stephenson and Chaplain William
J. Rutledge belonged to the Fourteenth Illinois Infantry.
They were tent mates and close companions. Since there
was not much for them to do on this rather quiet expedition, they rode along side by side and held converse about
the close bond of friendship that was becoming more and
more manifest among the comrades they had seen so long
together. Their regiment had suffered severely in battle,
and the survivors were being drawn more and more closely
together. They said to one another that this comradeship
would not be at all likely to come to an end with the conclusion of the war; that not only would the memory of
common hardship and suffering, common dangers, the common loss of "bunkies" in battle, the hospital, or the prison
pen, the recollection of jolly good times together in camp
and on the march, unite them in the bonds of fraternity,
but also the fact that they had fought for a common cause—
the saving of our country and its free institutions from
disunion. These two comrades were men of vision; they
felt that the sentiment of patriotism should be cultivated